Movies are a universal visual language that I have spent my life learning how to speak.  In college I worked as a University projectionist, so I had access to their film library, which was extensive. 

I decided to watch all the films they had in the order they were made.  I started around 1900 and worked my way up to around 1928 or so.   

It took me a while.

What was so profound was watching them literally invent the visual language of cinema we all speak, trying things and discarding what didn’t work.

Oh!

This isn’t what you wanted to know...  What movies do I like... 

Right. Hmmm.

Well, if I could only save one movie.... Dryer's 1928 Passion of Joan of Arc,

Something more MODERN you say... OK... Casablanca?

In COLOR you mean... OK... how about Raging Bull?

Well...

Amadeus, All That Jazz, Cabaret, Cinema Paradiso, Chinatown, the fantastic Camille Claudel, City Lights, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Keislowski's BRILLIANT Decalogue, Days Of Heaven, GoodFellas, Jean de Florette, Last Picture Show, Lenny, Mean Streets, Masculine-Feminine, Moulin Rouge, Network, Once Upon A Time In The West, Open Hearts, Pandora’s Box, Patton, Reds, Kieslowski's 3-Color's Trilogy: Blue-White-Red, Schindler’s List, Seven Beauties, To Kill A Mockingbird, Vertigo, Wings Of Desire (German Version).

And then we've not gotten to stuff like Kane, The Wizard Of Oz, Dr. Strangelove, Godfather Part 2, Ingrid Bergman (she's not a movie but an actress), Taxi Driver, the complex and at times difficult Fassbinder, and all of the brilliant and not often seen live-action short, animated, and foreign language films, from India to Korea to France to Iran, I've seen over my life.

Oh.. and Mary Poppins and... yes... I can say it backwards, which is Suoicodilaipxecitsiligarfilacrepus!